Affirmative Action: Texas Alternative Gets Mixed Reviews

Visions of college, that storied idyll promised in sleek brochures
and recruiters' handshakes, are unfolding once again before seniors at
Charles H. Milby High School, where turnoffs to lesser destinations are
never far from sight. This spring, another graduating class is
scrambling to fill out applications and scholarship forms, tickets to a
world removed from the discount stereo shop, rickety strip mall, and
scrap-filled lot crowding this brick campus.

The objective for many of the best students in this humble pocket of
southeast Houston is entry into one of the state's top public
universities, and their primary route to that goal is the same: finish
in the top 10 percent of their class.

What is not a factor, even at a school where childhood memories for
many students trace to Mexico, is race or ethnicity. For the past six
years, high school students across Texas have been able to win a
guaranteed spot at any public university with a strong class
rank—a colorblind admissions standard that is now drawing
nationwide scrutiny as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hear a
landmark case on affirmative action next week.

Texas' model, and similar "percentage plans" in California and
Florida, have been praised by supporters, including President Bush, as
successful alternatives to race-based admissions. Others see a more
dubious record of accomplishment.

What neither side disputes is that versions of such plans could
become the norm if a majority of the high court, after it hears two
cases challenging the University of Michigan's policies on April 1,
decide that the use of race as a factor in college admissions is
unconstitutional. And while the overall force of the court's decision
will depend on the language of its ruling, many campus leaders clearly
believe its reach will extend well beyond public universities to
private colleges, too.

The percentage of blacks and Hispanics enrolling at Texas' most
selective flagship institution, the University of Texas at Austin, has
climbed back to roughly its level in 1996, the last year before a
federal court decision effectively led to a ban on affirmative action
in admissions to state schools.

Those numbers—and the overall minority enrollments at Texas'
35 public universities— fail to satisfy many critics, who say
those schools should be doing much better, given the state's surging
minority population.

'We're Being Rewarded'

Yet the state's policy has plenty of supporters, too, including many
students near the top of the class of 2003 at Houston's Milby High.

Some students see affirmative action as discriminatory. Others
simply regard the percentage plan as an attainable, across-the-board
target for all students, irrespective of how prestigious, or wealthy,
their high schools are.

"We worked hard for four years, and we're being rewarded," said
Mayra Guardiola, 18, who was in the top 3 percent of Milby's senior
class at last count. Born in Monterrey, Mexico, she moved to the United
States with her parents and sister when she was 5 years old, where her
father took a job as a machinist. "My parents kept stressing
it—'You have to be in the top 10, you have to get straight A's.'
"

Students outside the top 10 percent can still get into Texas' elite
public universities—and statistics show that many do. But at
schools from Houston's urban core to its most affluent enclaves, the
pressure to keep up class rank is squarely on the minds of many
teenagers, who know that the slightest drop in grade point average in
any year could be crucial.

"It's a competition," said Ms. Guardiola, who is considering Texas
A&M University, another one of the Texas' most selective state
schools, and the University of Houston. "You get in the top 10 percent,
you want to stay there."

A Modest Effect

Everyone is at the mercy of the standard. On the city's north side,
Jefferson Davis High School senior Tristan Allen, 18, struggled through
family problems his freshman year, and his GPA tanked. Over the next
few years, he pulled it back up to a 2.9, but his most recent ranking
had him at 106th in his class, out of 315.

He's applied to several private colleges and public universities,
including UT-Austin, and Davis High officials are certain that with his
ability—and a 1250 SAT score—Mr. Allen will get accepted to
at least a few of them. But he wishes he didn't have to worry about
yesterday's failings.

"I pretty much bombed as a freshman," said Mr. Allen, who is black,
during a break from his after-school math club. "I kicked myself for
not being able to handle it. [But in] getting into college, people
should be judged on where they are now, and their potential."

Race hasn't been allowed as a factor in admissions at the state's
public universities since 1996, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
5th Circuit, in New Orleans, effectively forbade that practice in
Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Its ruling came in a lawsuit brought
against the UT-Austin School of Law by four white applicants, known as
Hopwood v. Texas. Not long afterward, an order by Texas'
then-attorney general told universities statewide they had to enforce a
race-neutral policy in admissions.

A year after the appellate decision, the Texas legislature passed
the 10 percent plan, hoping to maintain minority enrollment and giving
students from all parts of the state the same opportunity to be
accepted to a state university.

But while the percent plan has driven many students at Milby High
and other schools to excel, its record in bringing racial and ethnic
diversity to UT-Austin and Texas A&M, in College Station, is modest
at best.

In 2002, the percentage of enrollment for Hispanic freshmen at
UT-Austin was 14 percent, roughly the same as in 1996, the last year of
affirmative action. African-American freshman enrollment there was only
3 percent in 2002, a drop from 4 percent in 1996. The portion of white
freshmen also fell slightly over that six-year period, from 65 percent
to 62 percent, and the population of Asian first-year students rose
from 15 percent to 18 percent during that time.

At Texas A&M, meanwhile, enrollment for black freshmen fell from
3.6 percent in 1996 to 2.6 percent in 2002; Hispanic freshman
enrollment dropped from 11.2 percent to 9.6 percent over that same
period. Entries among first-year white students remained about steady
at 83 percent, and the Asian percentages rose from 2.8 percent to 3.4
percent. Those numbers, provided by the school, include all first-year
students, including part-time undergraduates and those whose existing
credits might give them a class status other than freshmen.

Overall, the percentage of first-year black and Hispanic
undergraduates in Texas' 31 state four-year institutions has seen only
minimal changes since Hopwood. While the raw number of students
from those minority groups has surged within the system, the Latino
population as a percentage of the freshman classes rose only from 20.1
percent in 1996 to 21.5 percent in 2001. Black students' portion of the
freshman ranks remained virtually the same: It was 12.5 percent in 1996
and 12.4 percent in 2001. Enrollment for white freshmen, meanwhile,
dropped from 59.8 percent to 56.6 percent.

Those numbers include both the part-time and full-time population of
352,942 undergraduates, according to the Texas Higher Education
Coordinating Board.

Perhaps the biggest failing of the 10 percent plan, critics say, is
that it hasn't kept pace with the growth in Texas' Hispanic population.
While the state's black population remained almost level over the past
decade, and the non-Hispanic white population fell, the percentage of
Hispanics jumped from 25.5 percent in 1990 to 32 percent in 2000. The
growth of college-age Latinos was even greater.

In a study of the 10 percent plan released in January, Marta Tienda,
a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University,
and researchers from other institutions, found that without strong
outreach efforts to minorities, Texas' new policy "will not diversify
campuses of selective universities." What limited success Texas'
percentage plan has shown, she said in an interview, was based partly
on the persistent segregation in Texas' high schools.

Despite being advertised as a nationwide substitute for race-based
admissions, she added, the evidence suggests that in other states where
the nonwhite population is smaller than in Texas, or is more
concentrated geographically, percentage plans could not match
affirmative action's success.

"This cannot work in other places," Ms. Tienda said.

And a report released in February by Harvard University's Civil
Rights Project concluded that the percentage plans in California,
Florida, and Texas, despite their appearance of color-blind
objectivity, maintain diversity through what amounts to race-conscious
recruitment and outreach.

Financial-aid programs like UT's Longhorn Opportunity Scholarship,
which provides money to students at disadvantaged high schools, helped
boost minority numbers, the Harvard study found, with the percentage
plan doing little on its own.

No Longer 'Defensive'

But others, like David Montejano, a former UT-Austin professor of
Mexican-American studies, say that some of the rewards of the 10
percent plan aren't reflected in admissions data.

Now on the University of California, Berkeley, faculty, Mr.
Montejano and other Texas university officials and lawmakers helped
write Texas' percentage plan. The percentage model helped change how
Texas minority students view higher education and their rightful place
in it, he said.

"You'd talk to [minority students] and they'd be defensive about why
they were there, about affirmative action," Mr. Montejano said of the
pre- Hopwood era. "I don't hear it anymore."

The 10 percent plan restored meaning to class rank, he contends, at
a time when students are consumed with college-admissions test scores.
And, he says, it has also helped wean public universities like
UT-Austin from the habit of recruiting students from a relatively small
network of high schools, year after year—though much improvement
is needed.

Despite seeing some evidence of the 10 percent plan's success, Mr.
Montejano joined several of the original authors of the Texas policy in
filing a friend-of-the-court brief before the Supreme Court, arguing
that percentage models are "not effective alternatives" to race-based
admissions.

Since Hopwood, both UT-Austin and Texas A&M officials say
they have stepped up recruitment efforts and scholarship programs at
traditionally underrepresented high schools. The number of in-state
high schools sending students to UT-Austin rose by 27.3 percent from
1996 to 2000, according to a report completed by Mr. Montejano in
2001.

Still, as recently as 2000, a relatively small number of Texas high
schools contributed nearly half the entering class at Austin, his
report found. "Talk about a skewed population," Mr. Montejanoin said.
"We're talking about a major problem of access here, not just for
minorities."

The dynamics of admissions at some of Texas' more elite high schools
also have shifted under the percentage plan, students and counselors
say. Getting into the top 10 percent at Houston's Memorial High School
requires an academic record of almost unflinching perfection.

The school's campus, set on the west side of the city in a
neighborhood framed by oaks and crape myrtle, provides a fitting
backdrop for high ambitions. Many of the buildings and grounds at
Memorial are 40 years old, but look near-new. Toyota 4Runners and Ford
F-250s fill the parking lot. The school's library is two stories
high.

In a typical year, roughly 85 percent of its seniors head to
four-year colleges, with Texas A&M and UT- Austin among the most
popular. But getting in to the Austin and College Station campuses
isn't a sure thing. At Memorial, many students keep up straight-A
averages and yet never climb higher than the top 25 percent, even with
schedules loaded with Advanced Placement courses.

Senior Curtis Cox's top choice is UT-Austin, and by almost any
standard, he should be a strong candidate. He carries a 6.0 GPA on a
6.67 scale, which amounts to maintaining an A average while taking
several AP courses throughout high school. Even so, he ranks only in
the top 25 percent.

"It started bothering me a lot more sophomore and junior year, and I
started feeling pressure to get my rank up," Mr. Cox said. "But
actually my GPA, or my class rank, never moved."

Wendy Andreen, a lead counselor at Memorial High, has seen students
request transfers to other, less competitive schools in the Houston
area, hoping to improve their class rank, though she discourages such
moves. But she also cautions incoming students thinking of transferring
to Memorial that their class rankings could plummet upon arrival at the
ultra-competitive school.

One such newcomer was Rusty Loyferman, a senior who moved to Houston
from Tulsa, Okla., in his sophomore year. Mr. Loyferman first heard
about the 10 percent plan from his parent's real estate agent, who
warned him about his new school's high standards.

He soon found out on his own. Mr. Loyferman was near the top of his
class in Tulsa, but he dropped upon entering Memorial, partly, a
counselor says, because he hadn't taken enough honors classes at his
old high school. Now he's No. 74 out of 442, just outside the top 15
percent.

He's already been accepted at Texas A&M's business school. But
UT- Austin is his top choice, and he hasn't heard from it yet.

To him, there was a trade-off in coming to Memorial High: It's a
great education, but hard on your GPA. "That's why my parents chose
this area—they'd heard a lot of good things about Memorial," Mr.
Loyferman said. "We could have moved anywhere in Houston."

'Patently False'

But other observers of the 10 percent plan, such as Ms. Tienda, say
anecdotes from elite schools about students' being shut out of the
state's top universities are overblown.

Her recent Princeton study found that seniors who graduated in the
top 20 percent from the top "feeder" high schools in Texas—those
that traditionally send the most students to UT-Austin—had even
better odds of getting into that campus under the 10 percent plan than
during the time of affirmative action. The image of top-school seniors
getting denied admission in large numbers, she said, is "patently
false."

Kedra Ishop, who directs UT-Austin's recruitment efforts in Houston
from an office south of downtown, agrees that some of the frustration
she hears from students and parents about the percentage system is
misdirected. Getting accepted to the Austin campus is tougher now in
part because the annual tide of applications has risen—regardless
of the admissions policy.

"I hear from mothers whose first son had a 3.3 GPA, years ago, and
got accepted, and whose second son had a 4.2 GPA, and didn't get in,"
Ms. Ishop said. "The first thing that gets blamed, oftentimes, is the
top 10 percent plan, and that's not necessarily the case."

At the same time, in trying to lure minority students, UT-Austin
faces greater competition from out- of-state schools, she says, such as
the University of Oklahoma, and private colleges, particularly
historically black colleges and universities.

Indeed, not everyone who applies to Austin is sold on the school
immediately. In particular, encouraging black applicants to attend
sometimes requires having to overcome stereotypes, Ms. Ishop says: that
there's no social life for them at UT; that Austin is unwelcoming to
African-Americans; that the three-hour drive is too far from
Houston.

"If we hadn't worked hard in going out to the high schools and
recruiting students, it's not going to be as effective," Ms. Ishop
said. "It's not about saying 'You can come.' It's about showing
students why this school is a good place for them."

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